


Hip Flask Bearer To The Gods

by phantomreviewer



Series: A Thousand Shards Of Pottery [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Take Your Fandom to Work Day, museum!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomreviewer/pseuds/phantomreviewer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire flops down next to Enjolras with a perfected lack of grace that comes of being orchestrated down to the last detail and puts his feet up on the opposing chair. It’s only when Grantaire interlocks his fingers behind his head that Enjolras closes the laptop before him.</p>
<p>He’s smirking, eyes taking in Grantaire’s wild hair and his lopsided toga and Grantaire shakes his head in a way that possibly could be menacing if he didn’t have a paper wreath resting precariously in his hair.</p>
<p>“Not one word.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hip Flask Bearer To The Gods

**Author's Note:**

> Because I managed to resist the urge to title this fic with an 'Oedipus the King' quote, I had to put it in here: _Oh! surely joyous! How else should he bear that fruited laurel wreathed about his hair?_

Grantaire is wearing a toga.

An actual toga, as opposed to a badly tugged bed sheet, nearly two metres length of cloth draped around his shoulders like a waterfall of slightly off-white fabric. He’s almost embarrassed by how easy it has become for his to don a toga, of all the things to have mastered. But at least the toga is warm in the drafty room, and the fact that the people around him are faintly shivering more than makes up for the fact that his hair has been brushed out wildly and is topped with a twisted paper laurel wreath.

He’s mid-description of the Roman’s fondness of wine and expensive foodstuffs when the door chimes open, and he’s so engaged with his topic that he doesn’t even look up to see who’s entered- assuming that one of the others will sell them their ticket- until he hears the snort.

Enjolras doesn’t laugh often, but Grantaire recognises it nonetheless and by the time that he’s shot a glare at him he’s faced with Enjolras’ mobile. Grantaire is half way to making a very rude gesture towards him before remembering why he’s in this ridiculous get up and turning back to face the small children at his feet. 

Enjolras just laughs again and Grantaire hears the camera click, and he’s going to kill Enjolras once he gets off for lunch.

Until then he’s going to focus on his talk, although he can’t help but sparing a glance towards Enjolras every now and then.

Enjolras can’t go and sit in the back office as he normally would, because for once Grantaire isn’t working alone - on activity days there are at least three of them looking like idiots trying to impress history into young minds - and the back office is being used for museum business. One of their more administrative volunteers has pages of order booklets and receipts poured over the desk, and while he must have waved Enjolras in for free it leaves Enjolras at an impasse. 

In the end, and much to Grantaire’s amusement Enjolras sits down at the rickety table where children would normally draw pictures of roman soldiers and coins in clumsy crayon, folded into one of the tiny chairs, and takes his laptop out.

Grantaire wants to laugh.

But because he’s a consummate professional he manages to hold it in.

Barely.

Enjolras works consistently, fingers flying over his keyboard, until the last visitor complete with hard earned brass rubbing and branded pencil has been gently tugged out of the door by their tired parent and the ‘Closed for an hour, reopening at 2PM’ sign has been bluetac’d to the door .

He only looks up when Grantaire’s fellow volunteers have excused themselves to go to the local café for a cup of tea and a change of scene and it’s only the two of them left in the deserted museum.

Grantaire flops down next to Enjolras with a perfected lack of grace that comes of being orchestrated down to the last detail and puts his feet up on the opposing chair. It’s only when Grantaire interlocks his fingers behind his head that Enjolras closes the laptop before him.

He’s smirking, eyes taking in Grantaire’s wild hair and his lopsided toga and Grantaire shakes his head in a way that possibly could be menacing if he didn’t have a paper wreath resting precariously in his hair.

“Not one word.”

Enjolras bites his lip to keep the smile in check.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The silence only lasts for a few seconds before Grantaire breaks it by laughing, reaching up to his own hair.

The laurel wreath is fragile in his fingers, made of tissue paper and over enthusiasm, and Grantaire handles it more delicately than he’d latter confess to when he settles it in Enjolras’ hair.

“There, you can’t laugh at me now. You’ve been crowned, Apollo.”

His hand is still reached out, touching Enjolras’ gold curls and he drops his hand as though burnt.

Acting almost unconsciously the hand that he’d dropped from Enjolras head buries itself within the useless mass of fabric pooling around his thighs until he reaches the denim of his jeans beneath. 

“Aha.”

It’s probably not the best practice that he’s been keeping a part-filled hip flask in his pocket during his shift, but what the others don’t know can’t hurt them, and it isn’t as if he’d been drinking it in front of the kids.

He’d been advocating the Roman way of dining all morning; it only makes sense for him to truly live the experience as well. 

Enjolras is frowning as he raises the cheap flask to his lips.

“What are you doing?”

Grantaire can feel his eyebrows creeping up towards his hairline as he drinks.

Enjolras is a clever boy; he can work it out for himself.

“Jesus Grantaire, it’s lunchtime. You’re at work. I-”

Enjolras’ shock would have been amusing, it should have been amusing and so Grantaire laughs because it’s what he expects of himself and he supposes that that’s what Enjolras expects him to do. He would hate to be a disappointment.

“What? It’s not like it’s the first time.”

The frown is more pronounced now and Enjolras had wrapped his fingers so tightly around his closed laptop that his knuckles have gone white.

“You can’t do this to yourself Grantaire; I will not see you’re wasting yourself like this.”

Grantaire scoffs, pulling the flask away from his lips so he can wipe the back of his mouth defiantly. He sets the softy worn flask on the desk before Enjolras like a challenge, but Enjolras doesn’t look down from Grantaire.

Instead Grantaire huffs, sinking further down into his seat, toga rising up and falling out of line, he’ll have to take it off and replace it before the afternoon session comes it, and it’s always easier to do with someone else’s help. But he’s always managed alone before, so he doesn’t know why the idea has struck him now.

“What’s it to you anyway?”

And still Enjolras doesn’t look away.

“Grantaire.”

Grantaire hates that he is the one to make the concession, and he grabs at the flask with a true gracelessness, violent enough for a few droplets to sprinkle on Enjolras’ laptop. He doesn’t look at Enjolras’ face as he shoves the flask back into the contours of his toga and into his pocket.

“Fine, fine. I should stop brining a hip flask to work anyway. The boss doesn’t like it.”

“As he shouldn’t.”

Grantaire focuses on Enjolras’ fingers around his laptop, determined not to fiddle or to give any ground away. He feels control slipping away from him when he’s with Enjolras and he’s always been steadfast, not necessarily right he’ll admit, but steadfast.

Others have called him dogmatic.

“It’s not got anything to do with you.”

When he catches Enjolras’ eye he can’t read the expression on his face. That’s not practically surprising though, in the months that they’ve known each other Grantaire has never been able to read the secrets behind Enjolras’ outward expression.

“Yes it does.”

There’s nothing that he can say for that, and the silence is heavy once again. Until Enjolras reaches up to his own head and touches the tissue-paper wreath in his hair.

“Apollo?”

Grantaire can hear the mocking in his voice, but it is to an extent friendly and he can appreciate the unspoken acknowledgement of regret in the action and replies to it in the only way he knows how.

“Well, it seemed to suit, fierce, fiery and radiant. All that jazz.”

It was endearing watching Enjolras try and keep the smile off his face, and Grantaire couldn’t help but subtly return the quiet grin.

Enjolras’ fingers are laced together in his lap, and Grantaire is struck by a moment of gratitude. This isn’t a friendship that he’d expected to cultivate, and yet Enjolras continues to visit. Has been visiting for months. Their friendship is like snapshots, a couple of hours per week, always in the same setting and never extending beyond the four walls of the museum.

He’s not even got Enjolras’ mobile phone number.

(He knows his e-mail address, from the scrawl that had been written into the guest book but it feels like an invasion of privacy to use it. Even though it was freely given.)

“If I’m Apollo, what does that make you?”

Grantaire is an expert at the self-deprecating vanity, and he smiles, shaking his mad hair out behind him.

“Ah well you see, I’ve always seen myself as a Vulcan. Strong, forgotten and hidden away for everyone’s benefit.”

Ugly and most often associated with the devastating destructive power of fire, it seemed apt.

He’s still smiling, and he doesn’t know what Enjolras is reading in his face.

That makes two of them.

“Vulcan, Grantaire? I think you’re doing yourself a disservice there, surely if any it would be Dionysus?”

Grantaire puts his hand on his heart in an approximation in shock and pulls a face that he knows makes him look half demented, but if he doesn’t over exaggerate then the true horror of Enjolras’ words won’t be put forth.

“What’s this, Greek Gods, here? What is the blasphemy? Surely you mean Bacchus my dear Phoebus Enjolras.”

Enjolras shakes his head, eyes serious but wry grin against his lips again.

“I’m not calling you Bacchus, it sounds ridiculous.”

“I’m not asking you to call me anything Apollo.”

Grantaire looks down again, frowning at the folds in his toga and idly tugging at the material.

The freezing building always seems to encounter time differently from the rest of the world, and sooner than expected the clock is telling Grantaire that the other’s will be back soon and it’ll soon be time to take down the sign and wait for the afternoon session to begin.

Enjolras is tucking his laptop back into his bag and going to stand, either knowing without being told that his presence would be a distraction over the course of the afternoon, or, more likely that he’s got an obligation. Sometimes Grantaire forgets that Enjolras exists outside of the museum. Enjolras seems to forget that Grantaire exists as a separate entity from this building as well. They make a right pair.

Grantaire stands with Enjolras movement, and Enjolras is smiling at Grantaire’s get up again. 

Grantaire rolls his eyes, preparing to counteract whatever comment that Enjolras is going to come out with, when Enjolras reaches out to him.

His hand is heavy on the shoulder of his toga, and Grantaire supposes that Enjolras is trying to right the mess that’s been made of it. He’s done it incorrectly- of course- and Grantaire is going to have to completely do it again himself, but he appreciates the thought that went into the subtle gesture. 

“So then Dionysus, I’ll see you soon I have no doubt.”

Enjolras doesn’t take off the paper leaves from his head and Grantaire only realises that he should reclaim it after the door has chimed. Grantaire could follow him outside and try ask for the prop back, but he supposes that it’s symbolic and suitable to let Enjolras continue to be crowned.

Also, he’s wearing a toga and missing museum property or not, there’s no way that he’s going outside where the normal people are, dressed like that.

He leaves earlier than normal, exchanging the task of locking up with opening up the next morning with his spare keys and when Grantaire unlocks the museum the next day, shaking raindrops from his hair, the circlet of green paper has been left on the sales desk, accompanied by a note, a scrawled name and a phone number.

**Author's Note:**

> I spent Wednesday as a false approximation of Mercury while spray painting offerings to the gods and absolutely covering myself in silver and gold, therefore I felt inspired to write some more in this 'verse. In fact the title comes from a running joke from my work, so has little relevance to the fic in and of itself, but it amuses me.
> 
> (At some point these two are actually going to enter into a relationship, I swear it. It's planned out and everything.)


End file.
